‘It is no good; I must go in and tell them; it is too late to
go back; I must tell them now what I have done.’
I knocked on the door, and rang the bell. The woman from below
opened it; she often did, and I went up.
There was a knocker on the door of Mollie’s room; it was the
first door one came to in their part of the house. I knocked on
the door with the knocker and walked in.
They were sitting beside the fire, George in his arm-chair, and
Mollie on a cushion on the floor. There was tea on the table,
pushed back again against the wall; they had finished tea, and
were reading; the grey cat was with them, on the hearth-rug.
It was comfortable, and familiar, and homely. There were blue
curtains in this room too, but there were patterns on them, blue
and white, and the cushions on the chairs were red; it was a
homelier room than Hugo’s, and the chairs came mostly from their
old home in Manchester, ordinary sort of chairs, not straight
deep shapes like his. There was a Persian carpet that had been
in Manchester too, the ordinary blue and red sort of carpet,
a pinkish red like the cushions; Hugo said they did not match
it quite, and Mollie said she would change them, but she never
did; and we got to like the cushions that did not quite match,
and we would not have liked to have them changed.
‘We thought you were not coming,’ said Mollie, looking up from
her book. George pulled up another chair for me.